Apart from the trucks that deliver our pallets of grapes the rest arrive in transport of all shapes and sizes. A few years ago our smallest ever delivery was in the back of a Fiat Panda!! (Admittedly it was only the remnants of the main delivery). However, I have never seen grapes delivered in a horse transport before, not exactly a horsebox, but still used for moving horses (I think). Suffice to say that it had been well cleaned, and so we won’t be making an ‘equine cuvée’ this year.

The fact that I am writing about transport is because Monday was a hugely uneventful day, which from at least my point of view is actually a very good thing. That’s not to say that the cellar wasn’t busy, because it was. It simply means that everything happened as it should.

The one thing that stands out from the vintage so far is that the yields are quite low. That doesn’t mean that the number of kilos is down, because this is quite the contrary – the yield of grapes per hectare is up. What I mean is that when we actually press the grapes, the volume of juice is not as high as it usually is. Normally, in a year where the yield of juice per kilo is low we would expect higher quality wine, with more concentrated must, but in 2021 it would seem that this is not the case. The juice is sweet, as it always is, but it is not particularly viscose and the potential alcohol is still quite low. Indeed, I would still stand by the prediction of my post on Saturday – somewhere between 12% and 12.5%.